“Reading Rooms” of the Third Millennium Have To Be Saved

Yevhen MARCHUK, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine:

Intellectual piracy is cynical theft. Unfortunately, it was not computer clubs but the state that indulged this evil. The country is packed with pirate products from state structures to casinos. There are many reasons for this. Here is one of them: there were certain influential persons standing behind some of the plants manufacturing knockoffs. Our foreign partners have repeatedly raised this question before Ukraine. The president have given a number of commissions in the last two years. Anatoly Kinakh’s government, unlike the previous one, has begun to address this complicated problem in cooperation with the parliament.

However, it is obvious that everything was not without distortions. Computer clubs should not be held hostage in this situation. Hundreds of young people in Kyiv alone who want to enter the twenty-first century with some computer skills must not be made to suffer. These reading rooms of the beginning of the third millennium must be saved.

The state has made a number of serious mistakes in the sphere of information science. It must not turn out that the hands of state organs make yet another mistake that ruins an initiative very promising and important to our society as a whole.

We will look for a way out. I think we will be able to find an understanding with the government, and we can arrange this matters with the law-enforcement organs. Without doubt, this problem should be addressed with the participation of Microsoft representatives.